Abstract EN:

In the decade 1995 to 2005, 17 states of Sub-Saharan Africa came together to form a legal integration organization, in order to standardize their business law and establish a flow of confidence for investments. OHADA (Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa) had to put an end to the situation of legal insecurity that plagued the continent by strengthening the economic attractiveness of investments, in order to create a pole of development in Africa. Driven by pan-Africanist ideology, this institution had to be resolutely at the service of economic development and business. However, more than a quarter of a century later, one is entitled to wonder whether this organization is achieving its economic objectives. The corporatist movements of November 2016 in Cameroon, based on the claims of English-speaking lawyers who castigate the “imposition” of OHADA law to the detriment of Common Law, allow us to appreciate the depth of the question. Those revendications, which marked the beginning of the secessionist crisis, reveal the legal mimicry which animates OHADA law. The legal Pan-Africanism, which OHADA embodied, had to be resolutely at the service of the economy and business. However, ultimately, it was supplanted by legal mimicry. Thus, OHADA's contribution to Cameroon's economic development process remains weak, just as the emergence of an economic development pole in Africa is far from being initiated. This reality is explained by the fact that OHADA embodies a kind of legal acculturation, hence its mediocre performance on the global economy. The opportunity for a radical overhaul of this model of communitarization of business law deserves to be raised